


Vent

by Kantayra of Yore (Kantayra)



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-04
Updated: 2006-03-04
Packaged: 2017-10-19 03:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra%20of%20Yore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Vent, n. - 1. An opening, as in a wall, serving as an outlet for air, smoke, fumes, or the like. 2. A means of exit or escape; an outlet, as from confinement.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Vent

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Ask Questions Later Ficathon](http://lex-83.livejournal.com/70120.html) over in [](http://lex-83.livejournal.com/profile)[**lex_83**](http://lex-83.livejournal.com/)'s LJ. My scenario was **How to Navigate a Ventilation Shaft**. All dictionary definitions are taken from the OED online. Thanks much to [](http://captainofidiots.livejournal.com/profile)[**captainofidiots**](http://captainofidiots.livejournal.com/) who is, as always, my VM fic enabler.
> 
> Spoilers/Warnings: Through everything aired (2x13), but this is my take on the S2 finale and how the bus crash/Felix's murder mysteries will come out. However, it is an entirely unspoilery interpretation, so the unspoiled (like me) are safe.

  
**Your scenario is: How to Navigate a Ventilation Shaft**

 **Detective John McClane (inside air duct):** Now I know what a TV dinner feels like.  
\- Die Hard

The ventilation systems of any large building should provide an excellent escape route in a pinch – albeit a claustrophobic and slightly circuitous one. But when the going gets tough, sometimes the tough have to unscrew a heating vent cover and scurry around like a hamster in a Habitrail to make it out alive. While no HVAC system is the same, there are a few basic principles you can use to escape to safety – as long as you don’t end up in the boiler room or get caught in any of those powerful fans.

***

 _Vent, n. - a. An opening by which blood issues from the body. Obscure.  
                b. Poetic. To pour out (one's soul) in death. Obscure._

  
Everyone had always said that Cervando was smart, but Veronica hadn’t really paid attention. _This_ , however, proved it beyond any reasonable doubt.

Eyes wide, she flipped through the pages of the folder. Receipts, shipping orders, photographs, and bribes. All the evidence needed to put some of Neptune’s most ‘upstanding’ citizens away for life, not to mention most of the PCHers and Fitzpatricks. Veronica’s expression turned grim when she caught the picture of Thumper covertly accepting a briefcase from none other than Woody Goodman. Damn, her dad was going to be bummed about that…

There was a disk stashed in with all the papers, and Veronica set her laptop up on the table in the sheriff’s department evidence room to watch. And watch she did. Video clips and audio clips from cell phones. More images, digital this time, letting the world know all too well that, while Cervando was aware of the drug racket, hell like he wasn’t going to cover his back.

And, ironically, that must have been why they finally…

She froze, mid-thought, as the third video clip she clicked came up into startling focus on the screen. The scene was dim, illuminated only by streetlamps and headlights of Cervando’s car, but the figures were unmistakable.

To one side of the screen, the gang’s latest victim lay passed out on the concrete, face bloodied and broken. To the other, the PCHers had turned inward, punches and shouts and yells. A horrified cry of disbelief and betrayal when the one against many inevitably failed, and the knife stuck deep into Felix’s gut.

She let out a strangled gasp, tears coming to her eyes, as Felix staggered away from his ‘friends’, eyes dark and incredulous, before falling to the pavement with a final cry. She’d never known Felix well but…

“Oh, god… Oh, _god_!”

The blood and pain and _loss_. It was like nothing she could ever have imagined, and she brushed at the tears in her eyes as she watched Felix breathe his last breath. _No one_ should have to suffer that fate…

***

 _Vent, v. - Of news, etc.: To become known, to be divulged or let out._

  
“Finally hit pay dirt, I see.”

Veronica let out a startled yelp and snapped her laptop shut. The sound echoed against cold, industrial walls, highlighting the sudden solitude – _terror_ – that coursed through her. God, how could she have let herself get so caught up in the videos like that? How could she – yet _again_ – have let herself be trapped in such an isolated place as the county courthouse at midnight on a Saturday evening, while holding the key evidence of the crime of the year?

“If that’s all it takes you make you scream, then my seductions have been sadly wasted…”

She spun around and frowned at the figure casually leaning against the doorframe. “Logan?”

He shrugged, using the momentum to push himself off and sauntered over to her, seemingly without a care in the world. “Looks like you finally caught me in the act,” he winked.

And, for a moment, horror like nothing she’d ever felt shot through her. _Logan was in on it. He knew all along. Oh god…_ But then, slowly, she watched his casual gait, the humor in his eyes, and realization struck. Of course Logan wasn’t guilty. The very idea was absurd. Because, in that moment, she _knew_ him better than she’d known anyone in her life, and he wasn’t menacing at all. He was…

Her lips quirked into a half smile. “Breaking into the sheriff’s department at night to try to steal evidence?” she tisked. “What is the world coming to?” And it was so _easy_ to joke all of a sudden, as if she suddenly realized that all the hostility and caution between them was for naught. They both wanted the same thing, and working separately, fighting against each other… Well, whose silly idea had that been, anyway?

Oh, right. Hers. Dammit.

Logan shook his head dolefully. “What is the world coming to? A world in which hardened thugs hide their blackmail evidence in our very own sheriff’s department because it’s the last place the police will ever find it?” He put his hand over his heart. “The irony of it all. It just gets you right _here_ , you know?”

She rolled her eyes at his melodrama. Although he had a point. Cervando’s hiding place – at the back of solved case files, as she’d finally discovered after nearly half an hour of searching – had been inspired. Right under everyone’s noses, yet able to be released with one phone call. Too bad the bus crash had been too sudden to allow that call; it would have saved everyone a lot of grief. “So, what trail of breadcrumbs did _you_ follow here?” she asked curiously as he finally came to a stop less than a foot before her. _Close enough to touch…_

“You mean you’re actually giving me credit for having even the most rudimentary intelligence?” he mocked gasped. “O, frabjous day…”

She just shook her head. “Cervando’s girlfriend told me he was keeping proof…”

“And, since the proof wasn’t anywhere in his mom’s apartment…”

“You broke in there too?”

“We must have just missed each other!”

“Such a shame,” she agreed wryly. “We could have carpooled.”

“I noticed you remembered to check the air vents this time,” he grinned.

Her lips set in a line that was supposed to be hard, but ended up more like a smile. “I can learn from past mistakes… But how’d you find out to come here?”

“And to think you mock fisticuffs as so uncouth!” he retorted.

She winced. “Okay, who’d you beat up?”

“Please, Veronica. Weevil did the beating; I did the interrogating.”

“Oh, of course. My bad.”

His eyes narrowed for a moment at her snideness, but he still seemed to be entertained. And, to tell the truth, she was more than a little amused by this twist of fate as well. “But, alas, poor Bootsy… For all his tough-guy act, he really did ‘fess up frighteningly quickly.”

“Is he…?”

Logan shrugged. “Who knows? Weevil didn’t seem overly violent when I left them. But you never know with that hot Latino temper.”

Veronica gulped, nodded, and decided there were more important things to worry about at the moment. “You have to see this…” She opened her laptop back up and hit play.

His eyes widened for a moment as he recognized the scene before him, before a shiver ran through his body and he wrapped his arms around himself carefully. “I didn’t do it…” he whispered, almost in awe.

“No.” Veronica bit her lower lip and slowly reached out to brush her fingers against his arm. “You didn’t.”

Relief and agony washed across his face, and then he was clutching her to him, and she would have protested, but this wasn’t sexual in the slightest. This was the sudden, certain knowledge that he wasn’t doomed after all, that in his deepest, darkest moments, he wasn’t his father. Her fingers found the back of his head and tangled in the soft, short hairs there, holding him tighter. It seemed that this knowledge was as important to her as well.

 _He’s innocent. He’s innocent. Oh, thank god, he’s innocent…_

***

 _Vent, v. - To give, heave, or utter (a groan, sigh, etc.). Now rare or poetic._

  
“I say we fuck ‘em all,” Logan announced cheerfully, shaking himself and taking a step back, like his moment of weakness had never happened.

“That’s the plan!” Veronica agreed, equally perky. “And you know that thing I said about learning from past mistakes?” She clicked the ‘send’ button on her computer.

They watched as the files uploaded, one by one, scattering to the dozens of e-mail addresses Veronica had been typing when he came in. Sheriff’s department, FBI, press. This time the evidence was certain and damning, and there was no way to halt it.

The WiFi in the Sheriff’s Department wasn’t the fastest, and long, agonizing seconds went by before the proof of Logan’s innocence was emblazoned across the internet.

“Free at last…” he murmured softly.

She turned to look at him, feeling the soft relief of tension she hadn’t even been aware that she’d been holding inside her all this time. And he looked suddenly _different_ to her then, like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders, the spark of humor and necessary irreverence back in his eyes along with the confident wit and soft core beneath all the cynicism. He looked like _Logan_ again, _her_ Logan, and she didn’t know if the change was in her or in him or both. But suddenly, and with startling clarity, she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. And any and all concerns seemed like nothing more than shallow excuses, ghosts and shadows built from her own subconscious fears.

He smirked down at her, but something must’ve shown through in her eyes, because his expression darkened, turned serious and…

Veronica kissed him before he could beat her to it, mouth hot and demanding against his. His lips parted for her, and then she was inside, tasting him, and nothing had ever been better in all her life. Fingers clawing at his back, working their way under fabric to smooth skin that she’d never allowed herself to properly dream about during their long months apart.

For a moment, he was too stunned to do anything but give in, but then he seemed to realize that this was actually happening. With fierce determination, he pushed her against the wall, his body flush with hers, his erection hard and insistent against her thigh.

She moaned in approval as he found that spot on her neck again, the one that had always made her believe that they were the only two people in the world. “Logan…”

“Mmm?” His forehead pressed to hers, eyes shut tight as if afraid to open them and discover this was all a wonderful dream.

“You can’t go back, you know.”

“Hmm?” Confusion this time.

“You can’t go back in time,” she informed him seriously. “Things can never be the way they were. I tried.” She gulped. “And you can’t have it all back.”

“I know,” he agreed soberly, lips flitting ephemerally against her closed lashes. “I don’t want it all back.”

“What do you want?” And she hated that she had to ask that stupid question, or that the vulnerability had to sound in her voice when she did so. But she needed this, needed to know that all was forgiven and…

“You.” He nuzzled her hair affectionately. “God, Veronica, I…”

And then it all went black.

***

 _Vent, v. - Of a mine, or powder: To explode imperfectly; to lose explosive power._

  
When Veronica awoke, she was caught in her worst nightmare. Liam Fitzpatrick’s blow had been aimed at Logan, and really she’d only suffered secondary effects. Slammed painfully back against the filing cabinets so that her vision swam, faded, and then came back all within seconds.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Thumper was panicking, eyes wide and frightened like he was just now realizing that he was out of his depth.

“Don’t be such a sissy.” Liam grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back out the door.

It seemed that neither of them had noticed that her eyes had slowly opened once more. Frankly, she was easy to miss amidst the spectacle of Logan Echolls supine in the middle of the floor, blood seeping down his temple. For one brief, horrifying moment, it was like she was stumbling over Lilly’s body all over again, yet another person she loved – _needed_ – gone from her life forever…

But then a soft groan escaped Logan’s lips, and he tried to frown, only to grunt in pain. Whatever Liam had hit him with, the blow must not have been straight on for him to still be breathing. Hopelessly, tragically lucky…for the both of them.

And something about seeing him alive, breathing… It _fixed_ something inside her, healed the wound of stumbling across her best friend’s corpse just a little bit.

Emboldened into sudden action, Veronica was at his side, examining the cut on his head. It was bleeding horribly the way head wounds were wont to, but didn’t seem deep. And if Logan was already waking up, the internal damage couldn’t be too bad, could it?

“Veronica?” Logan blinked open his eyes and tried to sit up.

“Shh.” She pressed a finger to his lips in warning. “Liam and Thumper are just outside.” She glanced back at the closed door and could now dimly recall that she’d heard the lock click when Liam had closed it. Safe or trapped? Either way, it gave them a few minutes to formulate a plan, maybe more if their captors didn’t realize they were conscious.

Due to his head injury or not, Logan didn’t seem to object to whispering. “Call for help…” He glanced up at her computer and phone on the table.

It really was odd, Veronica thought, that Liam hadn’t bothered to trash those. Of course, maybe he’d just figured that with the nightshift deputy of the office gone – and how she could kick herself now for that well-played ruse about the stripper and the car crash down the block – there was no one to call for help.

She was halfway there when she first smelled it and realized why it was unnecessary to destroy her phone.

Frozen in her tracks, wide-eyed and disbelieving, she collapsed in on herself. “No. Oh god, please, no…”

***

 _Vent, n. - Something which serves as an outlet for an emotion, energy, etc._

  
“Veronica? Veronica, snap out of it! God dammit, Veronica, this is no time to play the damsel-in-distress! Why can’t you actually turn on the bossy bitch when she’d be _useful_?”

A hint of annoyance flickered inside her for a moment, but it wasn’t enough to drown out the smell of gasoline, the thickness in the air caused by building smoke, the sound of fire and carnage coming ever closer…

“Veronica! Fuck, but there is _no way_ I’m carrying you out of here with the way you eat. So you _are_ getting up. Right now. Dammit, Veronica!”

Dimly, in the back of her mind, she was aware of tugging at her arm. Logan was literally trying to drag her bodily from where she’d curled up into a stubborn, frightened ball on the floor of the evidence room. The smoke was clouding inward now, and she could feel the walls closing in around her, fiery hot…

 _…as she banged helplessly against the door to the refrigerator, tears staining her cheeks as she gasped for rapidly-diminishing air, and…_

…Logan was yelling, shaking her shoulders, begging her to come with him. “Veronica…”

 _“Veronica, where are the tapes?” a darker, wickeder Echolls demanded, voice hissing through the static of her walkie-talkie…_

“Ouch! Dammit!” Logan swore and he jumped up and down in pain, clutching his right hand where he’d just grabbed at the doorknob in an effort to break the door down. “Fuck…” he breathed, wide-eyed and scared when he realized what the scalding heat in the metal meant.

Veronica realized it too. The fire was right outside… “No,” she practically whimpered.

Logan was back at her side in an instant. “C’mon, Veronica, we have to get out.”

Smoke was filling the evidence room now, and sitting on the floor probably wasn’t the best place to be. She coughed as heat and ash entered her lungs, and Logan impatiently yanked her up to her feet, supporting her weight entirely with his own where she’d turned limp in his arms.

“Fuck, Veronica, I don’t want to die…”

She’d seen him vulnerable like this only a handful of times. Terrified denial that some horror couldn’t possibly be true. His mother wasn’t really dead. Veronica wasn’t really dumping him and accusing him of murder. He hadn’t really stabbed Felix. And his father really hadn’t bashed Lilly’s skull in. The fact that he was only one-for-four wasn’t encouraging…

“Please, Veronica, I don’t want to die,” he repeated, “but I’m not leaving you behind…”

She gulped, and a strange irony settled over her. All her fears about Logan’s death-wish, and now _she_ was the one sitting there while the building burned down around them.

“Veronica!” he hissed angrily before hauling her – still surprisingly gently – to the back of the evidence room and the only avenue of escape they had left.

The fear overtook her again in a fresh surge when she saw the vent. Scalding temperatures and trapped all over again in a tiny metal space… “No, Logan,” she whispered aloud, shaking her head violently. “I can’t! I…”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He grabbed her messenger bag and let out a little exclamation of triumph when he found the screwdriver attachment on the Swiss Army Knife on her keychain; she always was prepared. “You can do anything. Just _fight_!”

He sounded so confident, so self-assured. And she wanted to scream at him, to tell him that wasn’t who she actually was, and…

“Please, Veronica.” He’d gotten the vent open, and he turned back to her and took her by the shoulders. “I know you’re scared. But I need you to fight it, fight me, fight _anything_.”

And, oddly, the thing that spurred her to push him aside and climb into the old 50’s style shaft that was as outdated as the rest of the sheriff’s department was that he’d actually had the nerve to say she was _scared_. Like she was ever going to show weakness in front of Logan fucking Echolls.

The part of her mind that told her she already had, she promptly ignored…

***

 _Vent, v. - To let out or discharge smoke; to carry off smoke (well or ill)._

  
“Dammit!” Veronica swore, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat as the conduit reached unbearable temperatures.

“We’ll have to go up.” Logan was sounding drained and breathless behind her, but he didn’t let up, giving her butt a little push at where she’d frozen at the juncture of the duct.

Taking advantage of the more than welcome opportunity, Veronica rose to her feet where the way in front of them was blocked by a metal fan and the only way was up.

“Whose brilliant idea was it to crawl into the metal chimney again?” she demanded, snapping in irritation at the whole horrible, stressful situation.

“Yes, because your whole plan about curling up the fetal position until we were burned alive was such an improvement,” he retorted between pants for air.

“This is just going up…”

“Well, we can’t go back.”

“And what are we supposed to do when—?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Veronica!” He banged his hand against the side wall in frustration. “Can you not overthink something and just go ahead for _once_ in your life?”

She sent him a murderous glare. “Someone’s getting too cocky now that his name’s been cleared…” She wiped a hand across her forehead, pushing the drenched locks of hair aside. What she wouldn’t give to have that short bob now, fewer locks clinging to her searing flesh uncomfortably.

“Oh, yeah, baby. Looking up your skirt is getting me all hot and bothered.” She could practically hear the eye-roll in his tone of voice.

Still, she yanked on her skirt instinctively. Although, really, it was pointless. There was just no way not to flash Logan her underwear while he was crawling around in a tiny corridor behind her. “I hate you,” she hissed.

“Hate you, too…” The words were soft, soulful, spoken in the exact same tone he’d said very different words almost a year before.

Veronica gulped and lifted one leg so that it pressed against the far wall of the shaft. “I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do this…” She glanced up at the climb ahead of them.

“I’ll help you.” His hand came up – under her skirt, of course – and gave her a little push as, body wedged between the two sides of the shaft, she slowly began to press her way upwards.

Her arms strained painfully to hold her position as her right foot took a step upward, then her left, and she shimmied her back up the far side of the shaft. The first eight or so feet were, of course, made infinitely easier with Logan’s support. And, by the time the tips of his fingers finally reluctantly parted with her thong, she’d gotten a rhythm down.

She could hear him below her, swearing as he figured out the technique as well. But, dimly, she seemed to recall that he’d gone rock-climbing with Casey and Luke back in middle school, and he got the hang of it quickly. Rich boys and their pointless adventures finally came in handy.

Focusing on the movements of her feet, one step at a time, she inched her way ever upwards, refusing to look up to see how far she had to go. It had looked like maybe twenty feet to her from the bottom of the shaft, but somewhere her senses were off because she was counting her steps – an agonizing six inches at a time – and she was approaching forty steps now with still no opening immediately before her.

She ventured a glance upward and guessed only five feet to go. “Five more feet,” she called down.

Logan just grunted.

She looked down at him, and it was a horrible mistake. For one terrifying moment, her shaking left arm slipped and she was sliding down, down…

“Oof!”

Veronica’s body slammed rigid against the walls just as Logan’s spare hand caught her from behind, his own body shaking with tension.

“When I fantasized about you going down on me, it wasn’t like this…” he muttered.

Veronica caught her bearings again and began moving upwards. “I’ve got it…”

“Hurry,” he gasped in response.

***

 _Vent, v. - to give vent to: to afford or provide with an outlet or means of escape; to cause or allow to issue or flow out._

  
With a screech of anger and frustration, Veronica kicked out the vent at the top of the shaft. Her clunky, black boots had finally found their calling. The horrible tunnel of heat dissipated as the cool outside air met her over-taxed lungs. Scrambling awkwardly, she escaped out onto the flat of the roof, cutting palms and knees on the rough pebbled surfacing.

Behind her, she heard Logan struggling and panting; catching her fall had taken more out of him than he’d let on. With strength and will she didn’t even know she possessed, she caught his hand and helped to pull him up with everything she had.

“Whoa!” he let out a surprised little yelp as he escaped the raging inferno below, and together they collapsed on the roof, taking in deep lungfuls of the clean, midnight air.

“Do you think that…” he began raggedly, “…maybe next time,” pant, “we should tell the bad guys they’re caught,” wheeze, “before they decide to burn the building down?”

She managed a faint smile as she looked up at the stars and tendrils of smoke billowing upwards as the façade of law and order in Neptune went down in flames. “Destruction of evidence murder,” she coughed, “is less painful,” gasp, “than vengeance murder.”

He groaned. “You’d know…”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” she demanded, turning to face him, eyebrow arched.

“Well, it’s just with so many people trying to kill you…” He looked down, subtle and disarming, before he smirked and closed in for the kill. “…I can’t help but worry that you have a death wish.”

A chortle of surprise escaped her lips before she could help herself, and before she knew it, she was laughing at her fucked up life and the death they hadn’t even quite escaped yet. She could hear him laughing against her, his chest vibrating with mirth where he casually brushed up against her arm, and the feeling of Logan Echolls laughing, _alive_ , was quite possibly the best thing she could ever remember experiencing.

And, suddenly, even though she hadn’t been able to feel anything but terror back in the ducts, full memories assaulted her of Logan’s hand against her center, of warm, strong fingers in intimate places. It had been necessarily asexual at the time; now, her entire body seemed to come to life at the memory, the anticipation of more…

Beside her, Logan was still chuckling lightly, lying on his side facing her, one arm pillowing his head from the rough rooftop gravel. His face was covered with streaks of blood, sweat and soot, but his eyes were dark and passionate as always, and she didn’t think he’d ever looked more beautiful than he did in that moment.

Time seemed almost to freeze as awareness filled her, and it was frustrating and wonderful all at once, because it seemed to take an eternity before her hands finally reached his face, cupped him to her, their bodies pressing together naturally.

“I love you,” she whispered over the crackling of the fire below…

***

 _Vent, v. - Figurative. To give outlet, expression, or utterance (to an emotion, faculty, etc.); to relieve in this way._

  
“What the _hell_?” Logan blinked at her in disbelief.

“Okay, so that wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for,” she teased lightly and pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips.

“No, seriously, Veronica: What. The. Hell?” He pulled away, and for one terrifying moment she was convinced that she’d finally found the courage to open herself up to him only for it to be too late.

But, then, those passionate kisses earlier would seem to indicate otherwise… “I love you,” she repeated matter-of-factly, running her dirty, bleeding fingers through his even dirtier hair. Strange how this moment felt pristine, despite the ash and smoke all around them. But then fire cleansed and sullied all at the same time. “God, I’ve missed you so much. I wanted you all along…”

“Funny way of showing it,” he retorted darkly.

“What are you…?” she began, confused.

“You didn’t even want to touch me,” he insisted, voice raw and shaking. “And then… God, you were in Duncan’s bed only weeks after you left me. What was I _supposed_ to think?”

“It wasn’t you…” she insisted.

He snorted. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.” His arms folded around his body as he pulled back, away from her and everything that had been between them.

An exclamation of frustration escaped her lips. “What on earth do you want from me, Logan?” she demanded, shaking her head at him.

“Want?” He blinked in disbelief. “How about not dumping me for my best friend for starters?”

She let out an outraged little exclamation. “I did _not_ —!”

“Veronica,” he cut her off with a skeptical look. “You spent the entire time we were together flirting with him at Java the Hut. You just _dared_ me to say something about it, so you could get pissed at me and break it off.”

Her mouth hung open in disbelief for a moment before anger flushed through her cheeks. “I broke up with you because you were _setting fires_!” she insisted.

“No. That was just a convenient excuse.”

“How the hell do _you_ know?” she demanded.

“How could I _not_ notice?” he retorted. “All you did last summer was try to pull away from me.”

“All I did was _stick by you_ through more than I should have had to!” she shot back.

“Yeah, right.” He got up to his feet and stalked across the roof. “I’m so sorry that giving a rat’s ass about me is such a horrible _burden_.”

She got up and chased after him, catching his arm. “Like you make _anything_ easy?” she demanded. “I _tried_!”

“No. You just hoped I would change.”

She froze. Because, really, there was no arguing with that.

He let out a wry snort as he looked down at the fire escape which stopped uselessly a story and a half below them. “Looks like anyone stuck on the roof in case of fire is out of luck. God bless our corrupt sheriff’s department and all its fire code violations.”

She grimaced – “Can we jump?” – before turning back to what, thoroughly irrationally, seemed like more important matters. “I just wanted you to be…” she began softly.

“Not the son of a murderer? Not accused of murder myself? Or, hey, how about Duncan Redux?” he suggested with false helpfulness.

She took a deep breath, stealing herself up. She could do this. Frankly, she had to do this because they were trapped on a burning roof together, and anything that was between them was better than thinking about dying. “I just thought,” she began slowly, weighing each word carefully before speaking, “that if you really loved me and I really loved you, things were supposed to be easy.” Miraculously, he’d actually kept his mouth shut long enough for her to get her say in.

He nodded slowly and blinked at the ash swirling around them. “Veronica,” he sighed wearily, looking helplessly at the inaccessible fire escape far below, shoulders slumped and defeated, “I’m never going to be easy. Just…never. In case you hadn’t noticed by all the lovely people who have stuck by me.” The last was light and bitter, as he gestured around himself to the empty rooftop. But it might as well have been his life for how deserted it was.

“I know.” She bit her lower lip. “I get that now, believe me. This is…you.”

“Lucky me, huh?” He gave her a thoroughly insincere smile.

“Yeah…” A deep breath. “But, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly easy either.”

He snorted. “No kidding. I couldn’t even get your top off.”

She swatted him in the arm in outrage. “Hey!”

He just smirked gleefully in response, amused despite the world being consumed in fire around them.

She couldn’t help but offer a wry smile in response. “So, this is my life.” She mimicked his gesture from before. “I’m bitchy and evasive and every May someone tries to burn me alive.”

“Yeah, well, I’m an asshole who can’t keep his mouth shut.”

“Who starts fires,” she added.

“But not the fires that try to burn you alive,” he retorted cheekily.

“See?” she shot back, reaching up to cup his face. “You’re such a sweet talker.”

He laughed, and their lips met slowly, simply. The briefest contact of tongues, and they pulled back, foreheads pressed together as they held each other amidst the flames.

“This is so not normal.” She actually giggled.

“We’re going to scream at each other like this all the time,” he warned.

“I can’t wait,” she agreed, mischief sparkling in her eyes. “I love _you_.”

He sighed and kissed her again, and this time she knew he believed her. “Love you too, sugar puss…”

***

 _Vent, n. - Any outlet or place of issue; a passage, exit, or way out. Chiefly figurative._

  
White and red lights flashed through the dark of the night, and with the sigh of relief, they ran to the far side of the roof. There, on the street, two fire trucks, a slew of previously-absentee deputy cars, and even an ambulance were pulling up around the conflagration.

“You sure know how to throw a party,” Logan commented dryly.

Veronica just shook her head as she watched the figures scurry about four stories below. She could see Lamb dragging Liam Fitzpatrick, hands cuffed at his back, over to the nearest squad car. Behind them, Thumper seemed to be spilling everything in grand, elaborate fashion to the stunned night deputy, while Hector looked back at Liam’s furious glance and gulped.

Deputy Sacks looked thoroughly uncomfortable guarding over a police car that held the Casablancas clan, sans Little Dick who everyone had been smart enough to leave out of _any_ sort of massive conspiracy that involved a modicum of intelligence. There were always some things in the universe that could be counted upon.

In between Dick-the-elder and Kendall, Cassidy’s head could just barely be made out, slumped low in the seat. Caved in to peer pressure in the end, after all. Veronica might have been more sympathetic if the process of elimination didn’t make him the one who had called in to set off the bomb on the bus from the limo. The one time his dad had ever asked him to be one of the men…

Damn, Mac was going to need some serious consoling this summer.

Still further outside in the circle of cars, was the familiar shape of her father’s dark blue Ford. And something just warmed her heart to know that her dad, who had Woody Goodman pressed against the hood, handcuffed and disabled, didn’t have Deputy Sacks’ same qualms about holding the rich and affluent of Neptune responsible for their crimes.

Still further out were Weevil and Bootsy. Apparently, the deputies were too busy arresting everyone else to relieve Bootsy from Weevil’s far-from-tender care. And, given the state of Bootsy’s face, Logan hadn’t been exaggerating about Weevil’s beating a confession out of the biker.

Logan whistled as the layers of conspiracy unwound below them in what would undoubtedly be the busiest night of Lamb’s life. And to think that she’d never thought that she could top last spring…

“Can you see why I hate this town yet?” she asked him with false brightness.

A smile quirked at the corners of his lips. “I’m beginning to get an idea.”

Lamb had noticed them now and was shouting to the firemen for assistance. And it was always a bad night when Sheriff Don Lamb was a paragon of the _not_ corrupt. Eventually, he acquired a megaphone, and the firemen scurried about below them in a rescue effort.

“Well, at least someone gets to revel in their delusions of self-importance tonight,” Logan commented.

“Oh, c’mon.” She batted at his arm. “Like you haven’t been reveling too.”

A horrible screech of feedback, and then Lamb’s voice was shouting up at them over the megaphone. “We can’t get in to use the ladders.”

“Oh, the incompetence…” Logan sighed.

“…So you’re going to have to jump.” Lamb gestured to where the firemen were setting up a net to catch them.

“See, now,” Veronica shook her head, “he’s just pissed that I burned down his station.”

Logan nodded, but his eyes were distant as he looked down over the edge of the roof.

And, suddenly, Veronica wondered what he’d seen when he’d walked precariously along the edge of the Coronado Bridge. His mother’s death, his own… But this jump was life, not death, and it was one he had to make.

“You can do this,” she whispered softly, fingers rubbing soft circles into the small of his back. “I’m here, okay?”

He nodded again once, jerkily.

“Any time now.” Lamb’s voice managed to sound annoyed, even through all the distortion.

“You go first,” Logan insisted.

Veronica just crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re scared shitless; I’m not. Ergo, you go first.”

He scowled at her assessment of him, just like she’d known he would. “I am not—”

“ _Scared_ ,” she repeated, annunciating overly precisely.

He glared at her and turned back to the edge. “I-I’ll see you at the bottom, right?” he asked shakily.

“I’m right behind you,” she promised.

A second’s hesitation, and then he jumped down, down…safe. She watched him bounce one extra time unnecessarily on the net, before two of the firemen hauled him off. He looked far too gleeful with himself.

Veronica shook her head. He really hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he was never going to be easy. But she had faced the fact that maybe she hadn’t been looking at the whole picture when the two of them had gotten together before. He really was the insufferable jackass who could make anyone’s life miserable that he wanted. And he was also the only man who could make her body burn with desire at merely a look and make her shatter inside with the briefest brush of lips…

Oh, yes. For all his difficulty, Logan Echolls definitely had his good points.

From below, he looked up at her now, and his emotions were plain as day on his face: Fear, concern, and just enough guilt that he’d gone first that she felt confident she’d get to enjoy a very long and languorous apology in the near future.

Lamb was yelling at her again now, and she could see her father approaching rapidly, still twisting Woody Goodman’s arm painfully behind his back. Logan glimpsed that little turn of events too, before turning back to look at her with an all too amused smirk this time.

And this moment, this perfect instant, was just absolutely, completely normal for all its insanity and chaos. This was _her_ , her life, her calling.

Smiling to herself, she teetered on the precipice for one last moment…

And fell.

***

 _Vent, n. - 1. An opening, as in a wall, serving as an outlet for air, smoke, fumes, or the like.  
                2. A means of exit or escape; an outlet, as from confinement._


End file.
